Conrad L. Wirth, 93; Led National Parks Service

By WOLFGANG SAXON

Published: July 28, 1993

Conrad L. Wirth, the longest-serving director of the National Park Service, died on Sunday at the Willowood nursing home in Williamstown, Mass. He was 93 and lived in New Lebanon, N.Y., for the last several years.

He died in his sleep, his family said.

Mr. Wirth, who was born in one municipal park and reared in another, spent his life serving the nation's parks. He joined the park service in 1931, headed it from 1951 to 1964 and for 20 more years worked with the conservationist Laurance S. Rockefeller in New York.

He was an associate of every President from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Lyndon B. Johnson; the latter called him "one of the greatest, finest, best public servants anywhere in the world."

Conrad Louis Wirth was born in Hartford in Elizabeth Park, where his father, Theodore, was superintendent. He was reared in a city park in Minneapolis, where the father headed the municipal parks system for 26 years.

Mr. Wirth, who was known as Conny, graduated from the University of Massachusetts in 1923, having majored in landscape architecture, and for five years was in private practice as a landscape and town planner.

In 1928 he joined the National Capital Park and Planning Commission in Washington. Transferring to the National Park Service in 1931 as an assistant director, he ran projects of the Civilian Conservation Corps for the Interior Department, the parent organization of the park service.

In his tenure as director of the park service, he developed a 10-year program called Mission 66 to spruce up national parks in time for the service's 50th anniversary in 1966. Active in New York

He was a trustee of the National Geographic Society and, as trustee emeritus since 1975, kept an interest in the society's affairs until his death. He helped organize the White House Historical Society in 1961 and remained on its board until two years ago.

Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller named him the first chairman of the New York State Historic Trust in 1966; he was also executive director of the Hudson Valley Commission in the 1960's.

Encouraged by Laurance Rockefeller, Mr. Wirth founded the National Recreation and Park Association, a not-for-profit research and educational organization in Alexandria, Va., in 1965. It merged several much older organizations with parallel interests.

He was particularly proud of the Wirth Environmental Award, which the National Park Foundation named for him and his father. He was the first recipient of the award, too, for his efforts to preserve the nation's open land and waters.

His autobiography, "Parks, Politics and the People," was published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 1980.

Mr. Wirth's wife of 64 years, Helen, died in 1990. He is survived by two sons, Peter, of New Lebanon, N.Y., and Theodore, of Billings, Mont.; four grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.